The Bern-based group of diplomats, which included Jewish activists, was led by the Polish ambassador to Switzerland at the time, Aleksander Ładoś, and is credited with helping hundreds of Jews escape from Poland at a time when the country was under Nazi German occupation.
The names, published by Poland’s Pilecki Institute and dubbed the Ładoś list, contains the names of over 3,000 Jews who owned passports fabricated by the group.
The Ładoś list was extracted from a historical archive recovered last year which documented how the diplomats helped rescue Jews from the Holocaust.
The archive originally belonged to Chaim Eiss (1867-1943), an Orthodox Jewish activist who was a member of the Bern-based group led by Ładoś.
It is estimated that the diplomats produced up to several thousand fake passports, most of them of various Latin American countries, between 1941 and 1943.
One of the Polish diplomats who was a member of the group, Konstanty Rokicki (1899-1958), was earlier this year posthumously recognised by Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial centre as a Righteous Among the Nations – people who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.
The Righteous Among the Nations award is the highest Israeli civilian distinction. Recipients receive a medal with a quote from the Talmud saying: "Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire."
(jh/pk)
Source: PAP/instytutpileckiego.pl